---
title: Check equipment before take-off!
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/check-equipment-before-take-off-1943/
description: Comic scene of airman Gooney flung from a bent palm tree toward the sea while his crew, stranded on a tiny island, point up at him angrily.
section: Collection
---

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3. Check equipment before take-off!

[![Check equipment before take-off!, 1943 US poster: Comic scene of airman Gooney flung from a bent palm tree toward the sea](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/check-equipment-before-take-off-1943.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/check-equipment-before-take-off-1943.jpg)

# Check equipment before take-off!

Comic scene of airman Gooney flung from a bent palm tree toward the sea while his crew, stranded on a tiny island, point up at him angrily. A verse says he forgot his E-6B (a flight computer) and the crew spent days on a lonely isle. The technique is a fear-appeal played as humor: the cost of one forgotten item is shown as being stranded.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
GOONEY HIS E-6B DID FORGET
IN FACT HE HASN’T FOUND IT YET
THE REST OF THE CREW FIND IT HARD TO SMILE
AFTER SEVERAL DAYS ON A LONELY ISLE.
CHECK EQUIPMENT BEFORE TAKE-OFF!
[signature:] LANTZ
[imprint:] ☆ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1943—O—500830
```

[← Change shoes every day](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/change-shoes-every-day-1943/) [China Fights On →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/china-fights-on-united-china-relief-1943/)

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- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
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